I've been dealing with a major headache for the past 8-10 hours. I woke up to a new Windows update and decided to install it right away to avoid any auto-restarts later. After the update, my computer went down, showed the Legion logo, and then hit me with a BSOD. I wasn't too worried at first since I've had to deal with this before; usually, a few blue screens will lead to a successful boot. But after 45 minutes and multiple BSODs, I started to get anxious. I looked online for solutions and tried the sfc /scannow command in the advanced options. It claimed to fix corrupted files but just led to another BSOD after a restart. I must have restarted the system about 8-13 times, but it wasn't helping. I also tried the DISM commands but I'm confused about those. At this point, I've seen at least 70 different blue screens saying things like "Worker Thread Returned at bad IRQL," "IRQL NOT LESS OR EQUAL," and "DPC WATCHDOG VIOLATION." I keep getting a BitLocker popup asking for my code, and I only have about a 15% chance of getting through to the next menu before it crashes again. I'm at my wit's end and even decided to try a full wipe of my system. I attempted a 'keep files' wipe, but it took forever to prepare and I had to do a hard reset. Then, it said Windows was being reinstalled, but after about an hour, I ended up back in the BSOD loop. I attempted the cloud install, and after three hours of preparation, I'm still faced with BSODs and can't even select Windows 11 to boot. I feel stuck in this endless loop. Any suggestions would be appreciated!
4 Answers
If you're having this much trouble, it might be a good idea to run a hardware test first. Use a Linux live USB or Hiren's Boot CD to check your hardware. Sometimes memory or disk issues can cause this type of behavior, and you need to rule those out before reinstalling Windows again.
Sounds like you're having a rough time! First off, if your important data is on that system drive, it's good to know the risks of doing a full clean install. If there's nothing crucial to save, I suggest going straight for a clean install from a USB. Make sure to disconnect any other drives during setup and delete all partitions on the system disk to start fresh.
Yeah, I don't have important data on there, so I guess I can go for the clean install. Thanks for the tip!
Forget the long-winded methods and if you're comfy with it, just create a bootable USB drive with Windows on it. Boot from that, and you can install a clean version easily. It might bypass all these BSODs completely.
You're definitely in a tough spot. Before trying another reinstall, you might want to boot into Safe Mode and look for any dump files in C:WindowsMinidump. Those files can give more insight into what’s causing all these BSODs. If you can grab those, upload them to a sharing site for deeper analysis.
That sounds smart! I'll try to get a USB stick and run some tests. Thanks for the advice!